On ETV’s Bihar channel, there’s a reconstruction of the murderous attack on Chandrika by her husband Virendra. ETV Uttarkhand prominently displays the photograph of a murdered girl — Seema. A piano concerto gentle weeps in the background. ETV Rajasthan has bizarre, not comic, relief — a girl who has been eating hair in Bikaner, undergoes an operation to remove the ‘bun’ inside her stomach, even as the reporter calls this a wonder of the world with inordinate pride. Elsewhere on Aaj Tak and News 24, ‘specialists’ discuss the inauspicious effects of Friday 13 (last Friday, as it happens), Star News produces a feature film version of the Nitish Katara murder (replete with a music score, special effects, action sequences and some atrocious acting), India TV pays homage to Sai Baba, and IBN-7 features an exclusive poll on a man whose stunt to set himself on fire goes horribly wrong: vote, sms — did he live or die. Meanwhile, it is one month since Arushi and Hemraj were brutally murdered in Noida and despite carpet coverage, no one is still any the wiser about the identity, motive or commission of the crime. But hey, what the heck, the TRPs for news channels are better than ever before, higher than those for even IPL, so it’s like the anchor said on a recent CNN-IBN evening telecast: “We begin our bulletin with crime, crime, crime.” The news and the news bulletin have been buried under a seamless, tangled ream of crime interspersed with celestial and other worldly conduct, comedy (Raju Srivastava and The Great Laughter Challenge going ha, ha, ha), cricket, cinema and current affairs — as in what happened between Saif and Kareena after the recent IIFA awards when he reportedly took macho exception to her dressing in public, sorry, her dress in public. What happened was that a Hindi news channel suspended all other ‘news’ (even the Arushi-Hemraj murder case) to analyse her clothes, his dressing (her) down and the impact of both on their relationship!The demise of news happened long since, on most Hindi news channels, but it was officially declared dead with the coverage of the Arushi-Hemraj murders. In the past month, TV news, especially Hindi TV news, has ceaselessly pursued the investigators (the police or CBI) and the potential suspects. They’re so vigilant, diligent, they broke news before it had been formed. Every leak, lead or information from the police or CBI was then pumped up with silicon implants (to make it more sexy) — and hot air balloons full of uninformed opinions. A clue became speculation and speculation the truth as ‘news’ floated from channel to channel. So the moment last week that Krishna was sighted on Aaj Tak being led away by the CBI protesting his innocence (“I am being framed”) he was under suspicion. Then he was captured on camera cringing on the floor — definitely The Suspect. Next, he was sitting on the lie detector seat (as a computer graphic), and Vikki Najappa, a reporter who has taken a narco test, described to Zee News what was happening to Krishna in the test, even as it is happening to him — definitely Prime Suspect. Then we were told how many questions he was asked, how many he answered, how many he did not, what questions were asked — but never his answers. Still, he was in CBI custody — Times Now had a Newsflash ‘Murder Premeditated’ with shots of Krishna weeping. Just under a month ago, the channels had announced that Rajesh Talwar was the murderer (not the accused). Now they ditched him for Krishna, without compunction. It’s become a two-way street: the police/CBI provide a clue, the channels blow it up into the latest ‘truth’ about the case, and we sit transfixed — gimme more. The TRPs rise, prompting channels to give us more and that puts pressure on the CBI to give the TV channels another clue. It’s Sex and the City where everyone and everything has been full exposed to media scrutiny without revealing anything. At the end of each day, you feel like the apes who are the latest models for Amul Macho underwear — mortified and humiliated by the exposure. shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com
